Recently, the whole family took a trip with some friends to the Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary. I took a lot of pics, but mostly of mushrooms I wanted to paint later.

In the gift shop on the way out I bought a patch for my motorcycle vest. When it came time to sew it on, however, I realized I hadn’t ridden the bike and it wouldn’t be right sewing on a patch I hadn’t earned. So I decided to load up and ride out for the day. About that time, Girl2 texted me to let me know she was home with me. I had no idea. I told her my plan and she said, “Say less! I’ll be right back down in jeans!” And that is how I ended up riding with my little girl for the day.

Since she suffered the ride out there, I got her a patch too. Now she needs a leather vest.

Also, here are the mushrooms…

If you paint them, please tag me in IG @theartisticbiker

A recent acquaintance has invited me to display some of my works at a local fund raiser for dobermann rescues. That sounds like a lot of fun to me. She suggested I may get some commissions based on my dog paintings. I hope so, but really I’m just looking forward to a good time. She did send me some pictures of a couple of dobermanns I could paint for display. Here are the work ups I have done on them so far

I’ll update further during and after the show.

This week I trekked out to Cullen Park in northwest Houston to do a little sketching at the Koch-Schmidt cemetery. Established in 1854 this cemetery sits inside Cullen Park just north or the Addicks Reservoir. There are a lot of these little cemeteries around, even in the golf course I like to go to. This one is chained off so I can’t really get up inside for great pics, but it was a fun day for me at least.

There’s a video at the YouTube showing the sketch set up and process: https://youtu.be/trPzDCfZxzM

This week, took the bike out to Mary Jo Peckham Park. It’s a a little fishing park in a small town just outside Houston. There’s a playground, an indoor swimming pool free to all county residents, and a pond stocked with bass, rainbow trout, and catfish.

The place is FULL of vultures. The whole area has vultures. Golf courses, parks, mall parking lots… Vultures flock here like other places have pigeons.

So I decided to load up and go paint them. At one point while painting them, some ducks wandered up and about twenty MORE vultures swooped in hissing and posturing to run the ducks off. It was very surreal.

There’s a video of the the painting process up on the youtube machine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPBF-lJvJr8&list=PLUaBuRlaP-h7ZF0tfnnu6deFqcum835fn&index=1